Presidential candidates Dragan Primorac and Zoran Milanovic, the incumbent president, engaged in a verbal exchange during a televised debate on Tuesday. Primorac told Milanovic that he should be ashamed of himself, and Milanovic called Primorac an "schemer" and a "freeloader".

The heated exchanges continued in the third round of questions, which focussed on the economy and demographics.

Milanovic, the candidate of the SDP party, said that under his government the budget was balanced and a primary surplus was achieved for the first time in Croatia’s history. Under HDZ Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, however, this had changed, he said.

Clash over the economy

“Milanovic talks about the economy, but he has never earned a single salary. Your success was the increase in VAT from 23 to 25%, indebting the country, and ruining the economy. When I became minister, the percentage of highly educated people was 7%, and when I left it was 18.5%. All universities are my project, this is the Croatia I live in and believe in, and you have been living on public money for 30 years,” Primorac said.

He emphasised that during Milanovic’s term as prime minister, pensions increased by €12 and salaries by €24 and recalled the cuts in salaries in the education sector during the term of the SDP-led government.

“The Croatian economy has experienced growth in the last year and a half of my term, which the Plenkovic government did not achieve in the first three years. Now we are growing nominally thanks to the Solidarity Fund and reconstruction (after the earthquake), or whatever this charity is called. You are the schemer and freeloader,” Milanovic replied.

When discussing the raising of the retirement age due to the ageing population and the adjustment of pensions to salaries, Primorac compared Croatia to the USA, where people work long hours but the pension system is solved.

Primorac on pensions

“The good thing in Croatia is that for every year, every month, there is 0.45% more, so pensions can increase by up to 30% over a five-year period, but this is a sensitive issue. During Milanovic’s term in office, the ratio between employees and pensioners was 4:1, now there are on average 20 employees for every unemployed person,” Primorac claimed. Milanovic countered that he had inherited this situation when he became prime minister.

The verbal skirmish continued with further exchanges. “Primorac founded universities, and in six Croatian cities and two in Bosnia and Herzegovina he made himself an honorary citizen. Dear God, that’s in his CV. As prime minister, I could have been an honorary citizen of any village,” said Milanovic.

“You’re lying, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Primorac shot back.

In later discussions, Milanovic emphasised that everything he said was the absolute truth.

“I will never tell anyone to be ashamed. I was prime minister and party leader for years and I never said anyone was lying. I spoke sharply from the parliamentary podium, directly, but I was careful not to cross certain lines in terms of human dignity. It was Plenkovic, the owner and mentor of Primorac, who brought the vulgarity. It’s not just about coarse language, it’s about telling someone they’re lying. That’s why the political discourse is like this, not because of me,” Milanovic said.

Milanovic: “I didn’t hang out with murderers of women and children and justify it as a fight against Hamas”

This prompted Primorac to remind Milanovic of what he had said about others. “Women are shrieking hags, wailers, concubines, the former minister is a goat, journalists are vulgar scribblers, gangsters, stable flies, a gang, fools… That’s you, I would never say that in public life,” he said.

“The wailers support me for president,” Milanovic replied, alluding to the term he once used in an argument with MPs Marijana Puljak and Dalija Oreskovic.

“I didn’t hang out with murderers of women and children and justify it as a fight against Hamas – those are your friends, while Putin is nothing to me. If he came here and I was prime minister, I would have him arrested,” Milanovic added, whereupon Primorac called him a Russian puppet.

Regarding the immigration of foreign labour as part of Croatia’s demographic recovery and the accusations of replacing the population, Milanovic said that he did not see it that way.

Dispute over VAT

“This is not a population replacement and certainly not Croatia’s demographic recovery. We see what is happening in other countries and we have to approach this with great caution and conservatism, but we are aware that we need foreign labour,” Milanovic said.

Primorac emphasised that Croatia has become attractive for everyone, but stressed how important it is to maintain the wage level of Croatian workers. He once again took the opportunity to criticise Milanovic’s term as prime minister and accused him of allowing 800,000 undocumented migrants to travel through Croatia to Germany.

“That nonsense. As prime minister, I sent a wave of people to Germany that I couldn’t stop, but I did it on a very calculated basis and it was a patriotic thing to do,” Milanovic replied.

The two candidates also argued about lowering VAT. While Milanovic opposed it, Primorac supported it.